


Whispers in the Dead of Night

by Sonzaishinai



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Injustice: Gods Among Us, Superman (Comics), Superman/Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Evil Superman, He's gonna be in a later chapter, Heavy Angst, I have a love hate thing regarding Injustice, Idk really I wrote this off the bat so I have no idea what im gonna do with it, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Poor Bruce :), Tags will be updated accordingly, The base of the plot will not diverge much from canon Injustice, The first chap has Bruce puking btw so like, There's a secret character, Unrequited Love, You know what yeah Kals gonna suffer too because I dont like him all that well in Injustice, if u want u can try and avoid it, it ends abruptly, slow burn maybe?, stress writing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 04:59:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16716994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonzaishinai/pseuds/Sonzaishinai
Summary: In the dead of night, he's looking back at the past. At the time where everything went wrong and then he's spiraling out of control. He doesn't know why he thought it'd be okay to visit Kal the next morning. Maybe he just wanted reassurance that the man he had fallen in love with forbiddingly was still residing somewhere deep down in the former dictator.Meanwhile, Kal is entirely too intrigued for comfort. Let it be known that Clark Kent was respectful, and never felt to pry unless necessary. However, Kal is a Kryptonian with little regards for those who defy him. Bruce is one of those people.





	Whispers in the Dead of Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Claw_Kraai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claw_Kraai/gifts).



> Eh, not much to say about this fic really. I couldn't sleep last night. Haven't been able to. Decided to pick up my laptop and start writing stuff out. A lot of the first chap to the fic is taken from stuff in my old journal from seventh grade when I went thru this rlly weird time where I'd break down over every little thing. Don't know what happened there. It still happens occasionally but I can't afford the time nor do I plan on finding out what exactly it was.
> 
> Anyways, decided to pick up my laptop and write stuff out at 3AM in the morning so, really, idk where I'm going with this.
> 
> If you read the tags, you know that.
> 
> I suppose this is to make up for that last fic of mine. Was kinda out of my comfort zone there and I'm rlly bad at writing explicit content so I figured I'd take my shot with something I had no plan to. Was actually listening to Johnny Cash's "Hurt" while writing this one. Hope my writing is more compatible with this type.
> 
> Also, fair warning, I, again, have no legitimate plan for this fic. I might delve into body horror. Someone might die. Might. I mean, if you read the fic, we can pretty much assume someone will by the end. I might actually take Bruce's feelings somewhere and put him into an attempted relationship with Kal. Except it's really angsty. I like angst. That's very likely. If I eventually make you cry, you made the choice to read. Don't yell at me, I'll do the yelling while I write.
> 
> Enjoy. Sorry for any mistakes, I don't like to proofread, fuck you grammarly, it's called my fiction writing style, that comma is there for emphasis.
> 
> Also, Claw, I changed my mind, I rather it be this fic I gift to you in return.

Bruce lays in bed silently, gazing at the ceiling of the manor that had once housed his parents and all those who’d preceded them. A sheen of moonlight engulfed the room, painting his skin bluish-gray like a drape of voided emotion.

 

A glance is thrown towards the door.

 

‘No one is coming,’ he tells himself. Vehemently, he reminds himself that he knows and that there’s no need to keep thinking about it.

 

The thought still purges through his barricades in the night.   
  
Thrashing about with silent restlessness, he caves, curling into a ball and angrily shoving the pillow down atop the side of his head like it’ll silence the thoughts, like it’ll muffle the thrum of grief that embodies him; as if it can wipe away all his mistakes.   
  
In the midst of the night, wide awake and not in control, his breathing speeds up, steadily- perceptibly for no reason and, god, he can’t stop it. He’s surrendered his claims and the sound of his breathing steadily envelops his small bubble and he can’t tone it down, his meditation techniques aren’t working and there’s no reason they shouldn’t work. Everything is fine.   
  
Still, he can’t keep it together. Can’t control the rise and fall of his chest, can’t force the sickening nausea in the pits of his stomach to abate and mine away at the overwhelming dread building in his mind.

 

He gets up, rushes to the restroom, dizzy with nervousness and it’s a mistake because the next thing he knows, he’s staring himself down in front of his mirror, palms splayed against the counter and shoulders hunched. His eyes are dark, almost glazed over despite their fierce arctic coloring and he hates the sight of himself so weak and beaten down-

 

‘Not weak,’ his thoughts supply, ‘never were.’

 

He wishes he can tell his subconscious to can it but he accepts it silently with a shiver of comfort.

 

It still doesn’t make the dread dissipate. Instead, he’s remained stationary, trembling with the effort to just move but overcome with a wash of tenseness that tells him moving is a mistake; that he shouldn’t break out of his frozen, little world in the glaring brightness of his restroom in the depths of the night. The worry, somehow, that moving will trigger a series of events he can’t afford to happen.

 

‘Protection,’ his head whispers, and he shakes with the anger of it, a rage that becomes mounted by more and more worry, so much so that it gets buried and, fuck, why won’t it go away-

 

Suddenly, the room is spinning even though he hasn’t moved an inch and he fights the instinct to bring his hand to his face to cover those reddening eyes from his own sight, to hide away from the cracking facade that he’s put so much effort into building. The anxiousness that’s been sitting at the pit of his stomach grows and envelops his senses and the dread crawls into his brain, spilling into his thoughts and bringing with it a series of what if’s and irrational conclusions.

 

‘Breathe,’ something says to him, but he can’t obey, he can’t anything and it’s fucking pathetic because there’s no reason for him to be feeling like this. Everything was- is- is fine. He was fine, but god, why is this so exhausting? He can feel his eyes burning with the need to cry, he needs- he needs to leave, to take back control, to make it stop but, god, he can’t make it fucking stop?! Years of training and it’s nothing but dust-

 

‘Endure,’ he hears in the wave of irrationality and he wants to scream at it to fuck off. ‘This is normal,’ it says, ‘Not dust. Not supposed to be something you can control,’ and he knows!! He FUCKING knows!! But it doesn’t make it any easier! It-It doesn’t make anything easier and- god- there’s a wave of easiness that almost washes over him for a second, the comfort of that thought, but then he’s hit with the anxiousness all over again, like a bus slamming into him and he’s throwing himself towards the toilet- hurling the past day’s meal. His throat burns and- fuck, he feels horrible- he can’t control the clenching of his throat, feels the bile spill past his mouth and his stomach protest as it heaves with the effort. It hurts- it hurts so much and his eyes are nearly rolling into the back of his head while he arches against the edge of the seat, hands grasping at the edges while he tries to take in as much air as he can with each reprieve before he’s sent hurling again-

 

For a second, he thinks he feels a brush of a hand down the small of his back, a small comfort accompanied by the soft whisper of “I’m sorry”, but he knows there’s no one there. He knows he’s alone.   
  
And then he’s sitting, empty-eyed in the restroom with an aching stomach and hanging mouth, back against the cabinets of his sink. Breathing. Just breathing, almost as if the pain had been abolished, rumpled into a pile of garbage that was thrown out. And while he sits, he hears again, the telltale whisper of, ‘You made it,’ a comfort in the dead of the night like the many nights before when he’d been a kid.

 

When he still had Alfred by his side. 

 

The next day, he’s visiting Cl- Kal. ‘Kal,’ he reaffirms. Kal. 

 

In the prison, he’s bathed in the red sunlight, sitting in the middle of the chamber on a metal chair, legs spread and hands atop his knees while his upper body lays against the back of his seat. Poised, almost, and yet simultaneously relaxed. A predator ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.

 

‘Like you taught him,’ his thoughts remind, and it’s a cocktail of guilt and pride settling horribly in his stomach and he’s catapulted into that mindscape again, reeling with nausea but forbidding himself to cave in front of the dictator of long ago. 

 

‘Endure,’ he thinks, and it’s just like last night except now it’s fear that’s piling in the pits of his stomach; fear that Kal will catch his weakness (‘Uneasiness,’ his subconscious tries to correct), fear that he will lose whatever dignity he has left, fear that Kal will use it to break him down again. Fear that he’ll see Clark instead.

 

His throat tightens and now he can’t get a word past his throat and, god, he wishes he had someone else here to do the talking. (‘Dick was always good at taking over,’ his mind supplies and he almost wishes it didn’t because that makes things worse) and he’s thankful for the cowl, thankful for the reputation of no tolerance he’d built in the past because, otherwise, Kal would catch onto him.    
  
He contemplates speaking, almost does, but his throats closing in on itself and he’s putting so much energy into keeping sane; into not  _ showing _ . It’s so exhausting and- he has to leave. He needs to leave. He thought he could make it through just a little bit of talking with Kal but he was wrong and Kal practically knew him inside out. He’d notice. ‘He’d notice,’ he worryingly reaffirms in his head. He had to leave.

 

He turns, his reddish-tinted cape swirling behind him as it followed. All he had to do was get home. Get home first, and he’d be fine. Everything is fine.

 

‘Make it to the door,’ he thinks, ‘Focus on the door,’ and he listens. The door. His goal was the door. Make it to the door. It was the first step. Just get to the door. The door. Get to the door. That’s all he had to do, and he was out of here. He could think about the other things later. For now, just get to the door.

 

And he almost makes it,  _ almost _ , before he hears Kal calling out (‘Not Clark,’ he almost has to remind himself). “You look terrible, Bruce.”

 

And for a second, he whirls with fear in his eyes- thinks he’s been caught- that something is wrong and Kal is out, that it’s the end of him-

 

But Kal is still sitting there, unmoving, and now he worries that something had given him away except- except…

 

‘Your cowl is still on. You upheld all your mannerisms. You did nothing out of the ordinary,’ his subconscious supplies and he pieces everything together as a smirk graces Kal’s face. ‘He was bluffing- he was bluffing and now he knows something is wrong.’

 

Before he can give Kal a chance to try and use it against him, he’s swiftly turning again, breathing getting shallower and shallower again with dread and fear and- fuck-

 

He’s punching in the code and doing the security measures as quick as he possibly can- god, why did he put in so many security measures- but Kal has started speaking and- he sounds so much like Clark, but he isn’t- he’s not the man he fell in love with- he wouldn’t do this to you-

 

“Is it Damian, Bruce? Your son? Or is it something else,” his voice furls into the air, and the door is finally opening- please, god-

 

“Or is it Alfred?” and you’re out the door and slamming it hard- and you run, by god you run.

 

‘You can’t stay here,’ he hears, and he agrees.

 

^(OvO)^

 

Inside the chamber, Kal is still sitting, unmoving and mulling over the encounter with unrelenting curiosity. He knows now, for sure, that it’s Alfred. He has to say, for all Bruce has fucked his life over, their past together did have its uses. 

 

Standing slowly, as if he couldn’t be bothered to go any quicker, he makes his way to the door of his glass-enclosed cell.

 

Without any indication of the rage boiling beneath his skin, he pushes it.

 

And it opens.

**Author's Note:**

> Eh, not much to say about this fic really. I couldn't sleep last night. Haven't been able to. Decided to pick up my laptop and start writing stuff out. A lot of the first chap to the fic is taken from stuff in my old journal from seventh grade when I went thru this rlly weird time where I'd break down over every little thing. Don't know what happened there. It still happens occasionally but I can't afford the time nor do I plan on finding out what exactly it was.
> 
> Anyways, decided to pick up my laptop and write stuff out at 3AM in the morning so, really, idk where I'm going with this.
> 
> If you read the tags, you know that.
> 
> I suppose this is to make up for that last fic of mine. Was kinda out of my comfort zone there and I'm rlly bad at writing explicit content so I figured I'd take my shot with something I had no plan to. Was actually listening to Johnny Cash's "Hurt" while writing this one. Hope my writing is more compatible with this type.
> 
> Also, fair warning, I, again, have no legitimate plan for this fic. I might delve into body horror. Someone might die. Might. I mean, if you read the fic, we can pretty much assume someone will by the end. I might actually take Bruce's feelings somewhere and put him into an attempted relationship with Kal. Except it's really angsty. I like angst. That's very likely. If I eventually make you cry, you made the choice to read. Don't yell at me, I'll do the yelling while I write.
> 
> Enjoy. Sorry for any mistakes, I don't like to proofread, fuck you grammarly, it's called my fiction writing style, that comma is there for emphasis.
> 
> Also, Claw, I changed my mind, I rather it be this fic I gift to you in return.


End file.
